Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Facing the empty expanse of the bright white that is a new canvas is
daunting for many artists. We often apply a coloured ground to calm our fears
and banish the glare. Most times however, it's the first step of the chess game
of painting. The first steps are the groundwork; setting the
stage for the layers of action to come.

This morning I had a reminder of a colour that is a frequent
choice as an underpainting. Favorite Paint Mixture: Permanent Rose PV 19 was
the subject of a blog post by Elizabeth Floyd this morning.

The clean freshness of Permanent Rose makes a wonderful ground for many
subjects. As you can see from the images here, I have used it for landscapes as
well as flowers. It gives immediate vibrancy to the canvas.

I love the idea of hiding layers beneath my paint - only I know what secrets lie beneath the surface. (Clearly, many mistakes secrets HAVE to be well hidden, never to see the light of day)I hope you enjoy looking for some of these early layers underneath the paint of the completed paintings.

Friday, 19 April 2013

It is so rewarding to have a room full of eager students.
The Ink & Wash workshop on Tuesday proved to be very popular. Experiments
were done with various pens and inks then later watercolour was added for some
splashes of colour.

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

My new website is now live. The look is clean and fresh. The motivation for change was necessary as my old site was running on out-dated software and was becoming unstable. Many of the images are from the original website but new ones have also been added.

A major advantage is that the new site uses a theme designed byan artist specially for artists. Kim Bruce from ArtBiz WordPress Websites, has designed a number
of themes that one can choose from, all designed to showcase artists’ images, while being
user friendly. Another plus is that you can join the ArtBiz School where
tutorials teach you step by step, especially important if you are not a
techno-geek!

Noise Hosting, did the complicated (for me) work of
transferring the data from the old to the new - and were so patient with my
requests, changing and adding various items until the final result was
achieved. I recommend them highly.

Many of the images are from the original website but new ones have also been added.

Adding images and sorting the viewing order is so much
easier, making working on the site a pleasure rather than something to be
avoided, which I did in the past.

There is now a dedicated page for "Abstracts" as this is a
genre I have been drawn to lately. Another new page is “Commissions”. The local
community has given me such wonderful support in the two years I have been in
Australia, I wanted place where these could be shown.

There is a
direct link to this blog on the bottom banner. I have also added a page for "News" that will have posts now and again about Exhibitions and Workshops.